Research Week looks to investigate Pokemon that have potential in Ubers, be it in stats, movepool, or supporting their team, to serve as an innovative choice in today's metagame. These are Pokemon that, for the most part, remain relatively untested. I've selected 3 Pokemon I feel, with help from everyone else, could see the rise of new and powerful sets, or the fulfilment of a particular niche. Perhaps the title is a bit of a misnomer; in fact, this installment (and likely future ones) of Research Week will continue as long as the discussion does, and that's where you all come in.

If you have anything to say about any of these Pokemon, please post about them! It doesn't matter if you've used them or have just faced them in battle, anything is fine (but please, do try them). Just be sure to back up your posts with good competitive reasoning, such as damage calculations! Posting replays showcasing the pokemon you selected is especially encouraged.

• Be open-minded, don't just say something is terrible and walk away; at least look into them and see what options they may be able to utilize!
• Feel free to theorymon, but make it clear that you are theorymon'ing. At the end of the week, however, I want discussion to move towards how useful the Pokemon actually are in Uber, and what sets are effective on them.
• Just because an analysis has been done for a Pokemon doesn't mean there isn't more to explore; it's quite possible that something might have gone unnoticed or is missing.
• Do not post in this thread complaining about the Pokemon I choose and/or suggesting ones we should do for future weeks. I want discussion to stay on topic about the 3 Pokemon we are "researching". Feel free to VM / PM me these suggestions, but don't expect the next research week to have all the Pokemon you suggested, or any of them.

So, the 3 Pokemon we will be looking at this research week are Landorus, Kyurem, and Victini.

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How useful are these Pokemon in Uber? What sets can they run effectively? What gives them trouble? What advantages do they have over other Pokemon? What roles can they fill in teams? Are they worth the team slot on your team or is it outclassed?

Discuss; the discussion that come out of this will surely be illuminating! Don't forget, you're not just limited to this topic to discuss these Pokemon. The #ubers irc channel is a perfectly suitable place to discuss them as well. Feel free to take the discussion to #pokemon as well. At the end of the discussion period, hope we can reach a general consensus on how good these Pokemon really are, and that we might find some interesting discoveries.

Alright, now that that's out of the way we can get to the fun part of this. First up, Reasearch Week will now have a duration of roughly two weeks. The reason for this is as follows:

The Research Week Challenge:

Users will use any number of the research week mons on their team

Users will attempt to reach as high as possible on the ladder with the Pokemon. Breaking past the 1350 mark on the ladder with your registered alt will earn you a spot on the Hall of Fame: Gold Class. Crossing the 1300 mark will secure you a Silver Class spot while a 1250 rating will earn you a Bronze Class spot. Post a screen-shot of your peak in order to achieve this, and a pastebin of your team.

Users will be expected to post their experiences with the pokemon they use, the teams they used, the problems they encoutered while trying to make the said pokemon work.

If a user does not participate in the discussion, he will be passed over.

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In order to participate in the challenge, simply post what Pokemon you're trying and your fresh new alt (yes, this is mandatory). Post battle logs, experiences with your team on the ladder, and generally how a Pokemon has worked out for you: past or present.

There will also be an archive of the successful teams who managed to break the ladder benchmarks. The archive will consist of the teams used along with the rating achieved by the said team and some comments for the user who built the team. Teams which displayed a significant amount of creativity but fell short of the points cutoff may also be featured in the archive. This will be decided on subjectively by the Uber moderators.

Rewards:

Winning the Research Week challenge grants you prizes. Here's the rewarding system:

Winning one RW will grant you VOPs (+) in #ubers.

Winning two RW challenges will grant you a larger avatar.

Winning three RW challenges will grant you a Custom Title.

Winning five RW challenges will grant you HOPs (%) in #ubers.

* You might get a Custom Title for winning two RW challenges, and a larger avatar for winning three.
** Getting HOPs in #ubers might take four wins, and maybe more, depending on our judgment if you deserve it or not.

Furthermore, quality posting may be rewarded with larger avatars or custom titles, even if you did not win the challenge. So get out and post!​

Swords Dance boosted Life Orb Explosion does a 97% minimum to max /max + Groudon, meaning that with just Stealth Rock it's a 100% chance at an OHKO. + 2 Stone Edge does like 79-90% to sp.def Skarmory, this thing is just so baddical.

Victini's cool as a Scarfer for sun teams having trouble with Mewtwo, its Trick Room set is kinda shitty. Haven't tried Final Gambit but I can't imagine it'd be that good.

No significant ladder placings yet, but I am enjoying Landorus a lot. I initially went for a gimmicky "three genie" team which didn't gel, but quickly discovered the godly combination of Landorus with support from Tornadus' priority Tailwind, A LO set with EQ/Stone Edge/Grass Knot/Filler can rip huge holes in most things without having to waste a turn setting up SD. This is one area I do find Landorus lacking, it rarely gets a chance to set up in my experience. It really appreciates support in this sense.

Currently working on a team centred more squarely around the Landorus/Tornadus pairing, will be interesting to see how it fares.

All has been updated. My experience with Landorus hasn't been that great; Choice Scarf is really kickass though. Outspeeding common Choice Scarfers such as Palkia and Salamence, and beating +1 Rayquaza is really great. I just need to finish up these edges I suppose.

Heh. Broke the 12001250 1300 mark at least. So far, Kyurem has been kinda helpful, in some situations. People have a little habit of putting their Steel-types in the way of Kyurem, only to die to Hidden Power Fire. I have been using a mixed attacker set with max Attack as a check to ScarfOgre on my sun team. I am a bit torn as to what item I should use, but Leftovers, Draco Plate, and Life Orb have all been helpful. The element of surprise is Kyurem's friend. It really would like all the power it could get, but it has worked well enough when I want to just punch holes in my opponent and set up a sweep.

Landorus has been surprisingly good for me, it's base 101 Speed is extremely helpful, picking off Scarved Palkia and Salamence, +1 Rayquaza among others. Although it seems outclassed by Scarf Garchomp with its base 102 Speed, threatening Dragon typing, and superior bulk, Landorus does have some advantages over Chomp: its access to U-turn (and a fairly strong one at that) is also a great way to keep momentum going for you. (T-)Spikes immunity is also a blessing in a metagame where spikestacking is so popular. It also gets a more powerful Earthquake in a sandstorm, which can really help in some situations.

On a related note, I've also tested Victini, but I'm not nearly as satisfied with it as I am with Landorus. Maybe it's just a question of the team I'm using or what but yeah. V-Create in sun is pretty darn beastly though.

Kyurem is cool to say the least. I used Scarf Kyurem, and while it was certainly effective, it still ended up being too slow. It works great late game, when the opponent has been sufficiently weakened to let Ice Beam/Dragon Pulse plow through. it's also good to be able to Draco Meteor a troublesome Pokemon.

Kyurem needs a boosting move >.> Dragon Dance, Tail Glow, Something. I started out with Specs, but it was simply too slow for my taste, getting killed by almost everything. Switching to Scarf made a world of difference. It could now outspeed Scarf Reshiram/Zekrom, which helped a lot. Its typing also was a boon. It could switch into things like Scarf Kyogre and Draco Meteor it.

I don't have much to say, I'm going to keep laddering so I might or might not hit Silver/Gold.

edit, yeah that's not going to happen, I hit a losing streak as soon as I hit the mark lol

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Hit 1240, but I got haxed and now I'm back at 1200.

I've been using Scarf Victini on a defensive sun team and it's been pretty cool. It's a useful Scarf user because of that insane power from V-Create in the sun and it can also switch in on Mewtwo which is awesome.

I am currently floating around the 1150s I believe? Didn't touch my team much and it has stuff to fix, such as its glaring Giratina weakness (aight Toma?). Landorus is kinda cool though, it's a great Choice Scarfer, and I may as well try a SubSD Set because it can punish many Pokemon in this tier, such as Kyogre (which is solidly 2HKOed by an un-boosted Earthquake), Zekrom, and Dialga.